Welcome to a blog about crafting, adventure, and loving the life I have. I hope you'll stay!

Friday, October 12, 2012

Dining Room Seating

During our last weekend garage sale-ing adventure, we stumbled upon dining-room furniture that was just too good to pass up. While we had plans to make "free benches," out of an old pallet, the cost of the legs, hardware, and stress would have actually been way greater than what we paid for these three gems.

This lovely little piano bench was only $8. We were in love with the fun vintage fabric, which wouldn't actually match our dining room set. But we knew we could use the fabric elsewhere when we removed it from this piece.

And these seat-less chairs were only a buck each!

Granted, they were gross.

And missing some very crucial pieces, but that didn't scare us away.

We soaped them down, and sanded all the rough spots, and then added a few coats of paint.

Already looking better.

Now for upholstering... Alan brought the chairs and the bench into the hardware store with him and got some pieces of plywood cut to the exact measurements. Each chair needed one for the seat, but he also got one for the bench which already had a seat. We painted this piece white, and used it to turn the bench into a storage space. More on that later. While he was at the store, he also got a dowel to fit between the legs of the bench to help it's wobble factor.

While the paint dried, we stapled 8 layers of quilter's batting to the seats.

Looking oh-so-comfortable, wouldn't you say?

And then we stretched and stapled some gray suede-ish fabric on top.

I know this is a crazy angle, but to get the seats to fit snugly onto the chairs I literally had to sit on them while Alan laid underneath and drilled from the bottom.

Don't the chairs look SO MUCH CLASSIER?

For the bench, Alan drilled the painted plywood into the underside, flipped it over, and attached the seat with some small hinges, to allow us to flip it open.

Then he had a stroke of genius. If we were going to be flipping the
bench open all the time, the backside of that seat should be adorable
too.

So he added some amazing, bright, vintage sheet fabric we scored a few weeks back. To avoid visible staples, he used an iron-on fusible to attach it.